Bernard Spitzer

Spitzer's parents, Morris and Molly, moved from Tulste, Poland (now Ukraine) to New York's Lower East Side after World War I. They operated a print shop. Bernard received an engineering degree from City College of New York in 1943 at the age of 18. He successfully competed with Jerry Stiller for the hand of Anne Goldhaber, whom they courted in the Catskills.

Spitzer initially tried his hand at civil engineering but turned instead to real estate development.

Among the buildings Spitzer has built are:

Additionally, Spitzer has purchased several prominent commercial office buildings over the years, including:

Spitzer played a major role in the childhood and the rise to power of his son Eliot, the future New York Governor. According to biographers, during a game of Monopoly between father and son, the elder Spitzer would order his seven or eight year-old son, Eliot, to sell him a piece of property, which, later in the game, the future governor could not afford. In this way the father taught his son: "Never defer to authority." Read Less